"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Spent this weekend making things with my hands, gifts for some of the children I’m blessed to have in my life 🙂 I often tell my writing students, “Remember: you are now the maker. You have the magic of the maker.” Thinking on this a lot this weekend, on how the mystery of art emerges from our hands.

Making a Poemby Paul B. Newman

You make a poem like a man taking the measure of a sheet of copper;first you cut it in the roundclipping the disc of dull soft metal,then you take a hammer and poundover all its surface on the smalliron hoof of the anvil,forming a deepness within the curvelight within light reflectingcool as the ripples in a well, forming it on the resistance of the anviluntil it is so with texture, and withusefulness a form and with delight a unity.

Make art about being a maker, about the act of making.

Blacksmith hammering red hot steel on a wooden surface that is catching on fire. Focus is on the hammer and glove.